Tag Archives: old masters

Detail from Albrecht Dürer’s ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” from “The Apocalypse: Revelation of Saint John the Divine'” (ca. 1497).

EDINBURGH — A collection of iconic prints by some of the finest European artists of the past 500 years is on view at the National Gallery of Scotland. The skills of artists such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Francisco Goya and Albrecht Dürer, are on display in The Printmaker’s Art, which showcases some of the most beautiful and intricate prints ever made. Exhibit highlights include an impression of Dürer’s celebrated woodcut The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and Rembrandt’s tour-de-force etching, The Three Crosses.

The exhibition website explains:

“Prints are made by drawing onto a surface such as a woodblock, metal plate or lithographic stone, and then transferring the image, using a variety of means, onto a separate sheet of paper. Over the centuries, artists have exploited a diverse range of printmaking techniques to create an array of distinctive effects that cannot be achieved in any other medium. In the process many great artists, such as Blake, Goya and Toulouse-Lautrec, have produced prints that are considered to be among their most brilliant and influential works.

The 30 works on display have been selected not only for their exquisite beauty, but also to trace the development of printmaking techniques over the centuries, and to demonstrate the sophisticated processes that led to their creation.”

The Printmaker’s Art is on view through May 23. For more information on this exhibit, please visit www.nationalgalleries.org
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As thedemand for rare worksby the greatest of the Old Masters continues to escalate throughout the world, Park West Gallery is pleased to offer timeless and historic works by some of the most important artists of all time. Please visit the Park West Gallery fine art collection onlineto view selections by master printmakers including Rembrandt, Goya and Dürer.

This etching by 17th century Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn was discovered in a bathroom in Nugent Hall at The Catholic University of America. [Credit: AP Photo/The Catholic University of America, Ed Pfuellera]

WASHINGTON D.C. — A fun part of collecting artwork from Park West Gallery (from anywhere really) is deciding where the piece should hang to best fit in with your decor. Art is created to be seen, displayed and enjoyed each and every day; not to be tucked away, lost or forgotten. So how did an original Rembrandt etching find its way into a bathroom cabinet at The Catholic University of America (CUA) and then for years remain hidden there, obscured from public view?

“I went into the restroom in Nugent Hall and opened a cabinet there,” explained CUA’s president Rev. David O’Connell, who found the Rembrandt print while searching for paper towels in a university bathroom. “I found the paper towels but as I was closing the cabinet door, I noticed on the bottom shelf under some junk, a picture frame jutting out. I bent down, pulled out the frame only to discover an etching that looked familiar to me. Why it was there or how it got there, I’ll never know.”

The small 4.5″x5″ etching of a bearded old man contains a handwritten inscription in French on the back of the work which reads: “The bust of an old man with a great beard seen about most of the face. His head a little perched gives him the attitude of a man who sleeps.”

CUA archivist Leslie Knoblauch says an appraiser has confirmed the authenticity of the Rembrandt, which is currently the centerpiece of a new exhibit at the university. “We saw his name twice on the piece, but we still couldn’t believe that’s what this was,” Knoblauch told The Washington Post. “Who finds a Rembrandt randomly in their home?”

Fine Lines: Discovering Rembrandt and Other Old Masters at Catholic University is on view through May 21, 2010 and features several other drawings, etchings, engravings and woodcut prints by American and European artists.

A handful of notable museums in Southern California have created a unique collaborative online exhibition focused on the seventeenth-century Dutch master, Rembrandt van Rijn.

The Rembrandt in Southern California website offers a virtual exhibition of 14 paintings by the artist, with each work of art accompanied by an audio discussion from museum curators and directors. If you can’t travel to sunny California, the online guided tour is an exceptional way to learn about the paintings, and with your own virtual docent no less.

Southern California is home to the third-largest assemblage of Rembrandt paintings in the United States. By comparison, the Park West Gallery Rembrandt Collection isn’t quite as extensive, but we can certainly attest that launching a website is a really great way to educate the public about art. (You can visit the Park West Gallery Rembrandt website here.)

In addition to coordinating the Rembrandt in Southern California website, the five area museums – the Hammer Museum, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles; the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena; and the Timken Museum of Art in San Diego – are also offering tours, lectures and exhibits centered around Rembrandt and his peers.

For over 40 years, Park West Gallery has been a world-wide source for collectors of original etchings by Rembrandt Van Rijn, the artist viewed by so many as the greatest etcher of all time. Learn all about Rembrandt and the art of etching at thePark West Gallery/Rembrandt Website >>

AMSTERDAM — The Rijksmuseum’s Tavern Scenes exhibition gives an idea of what it was like to be in a tavern in the 16th and 17th century. Taverns, fairs, village revelries and the accompanying feasting and fighting were favourite themes in art of the Low Countries in the 16th and 17th centuries, and were meant to be both entertaining and educational. This graphic pub-crawl in 18 prints and drawings takes in some of the most colourful watering-holes in the Rijksmuseum Print Room collection.

Princes would pay huge sums to add a painting of rustic merrymakers by Pieter Bruegel to their collection. Prints after his drawings appeared in huge numbers and inspired generations of Dutch artists. Descendants of Bruegel’s villagers are featured in this presentation in the raucous drunkards depicted by Adriaen Brouwer, and likewise in the amiable drinking companions portrayed by Cornelis Dusart later in the 17th-century. Also shown are prints and drawings by masters such as Rembrandt, Adriaen van Ostade and Cornelis Bega who knew how to depict life in Holland’s taverns like no other.

Famed German draftsman, painter and writer, Albrecht Dürer, is best known for his exquisite, intricate woodcuts and engravings. Dürer’s name is included among art history’s Old Masters, and he continues to earn renown for his innovative, skillfully-executed works.

With keen curiosity and limited education, Albrecht Dürer interacted with leading humanists and scholars of the northern Renaissance, an exciting period when the spread of resurrected texts and classical art sparked a fashionable cultural revolution in his native Nuremberg. Their discussions and friendships informed many of his prints, which became monuments in the history of printmaking.

Ideas Dürer confronted in his prints stem in part from his conversations with these scholars and their knowledge of ancient and contemporary literature made available in first and newly published editions. The rise of humanism, revived classical sources, and new theological writings attracted Dürer and propelled his portraits of scholars as well as his renderings of saints, biblical figures, classical gods and goddesses, sea monsters, satyrs, Satan, and Death.

Albrecht Dürer: Impressions of the Renaissance is now on view through December 24, 2009.

For over 40 years, Park West Gallery has been a world-wide source for collectors of original etchings by Rembrandt Van Rijn, the artist viewed by so many as the greatest etcher of all time.Park West – Rembrandt Website >>
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CARDIFF, WALES — A special loan of Rembrandt van Rijn’s (1606-1669) Portrait of Catrina Hooghsaet from Penrhyn Castle is on view at National Museum Cardiff alongside original etchings and Netherlandish portraits from Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales’ own collection. The portrait of the wealthy Amsterdam lady, painted in 1657, is an example of Rembrandt’s outstanding talent for painting characters, not just faces. It demonstrates his ability to combine fine detail, blurred impressions and dramatic effects of light and shade.

Rembrandt was also a brilliant printmaker. Examples of his etchings, with which he experimented to achieve unprecedented tones and expressive effects, also form part of the Rembrandt in Focus display. These are joined by Netherlandish portraits of three other women including a painting of the Welsh heiress Katheryn of Berain, attributed to Van Cronenburgh.

During the 1650s, Rembrandt was the most celebrated artist in Amsterdam. Today, he’s recognized as one of the most important figures in the history of art and his work continues to inspire artists across the globe.

Albrecht Dürer – the famed German draftsman, painter and writer – is best known for his exquisite, intricate woodcuts and engravings. Dürer’s name is included among art history’s Old Masters, and he continues to earn renown for his innovative, skillfully-executed works.Park West Gallery Artist Bios >>
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Tom Rassieur, the museum’s print curator, said he hasn’t yet read the book but got a tip that Dürer’s 1514 image Melencolia I plays a role in the plot, so he got it out of storage and hung it.

“Durer is easily among the greatest artists of all time and a real favorite of mine,” said Rassieur. “That print is rife with symbols but I think it’s also a psychological self-portrait that expresses the frustration of a creative genius…”

HOUSTON, TEXAS — To mark the 40th anniversary of man´s landing on the moon, this September the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents The Moon: “Houston, Tranquility Base Here. The Eagle Has Landed.” This exhibition chronicles man´s enduring fascination over five centuries with our nearest planetary neighbor. Ranging from moonlit landscapes by the Old Masters and the Impressionists, to Ansel Adams´ iconic Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico (1941) and shots famously taken on the moon by the members of Apollo 11, the exhibition provides a dazzling overview of five centuries of moon-gazing. In addition, early scientific instruments, books, moon globes, maps, Galileo Galilei´s 1610 treatise on the moon, and objects from NASA are on view.

The exhibition´s title is taken from the famous first words that Commander Neil Armstrong broadcast to Mission Control, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, after Apollo 11 landed on the moon on Sunday, July 20, 1969, 3:18 pm CST: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” By changing the call signal to Tranquility Base, the landing site, Armstrong signaled to his colleagues back on Earth that the lander portion of their spacecraft (named the Eagle after the USA´s national bird) had set down on the moon.

On view will be works by Albrecht Dürer, Peter Paul Rubens, Aelbert Cuyp, Joseph Wright of Derby, Caspar David Friedrich, Honoré Daumier, Jean-François Millet, Charles-François Daubigny, Gustav Doré, Edouard Manet, Edvard Munch, Max Beckmann, Robert Wilson, and Sharon Harper. The oldest objects in the exhibition, such as The Virgin of the Crescent Moon (1511), a woodcut by the great German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, show the moon in a religious context; the most recent artworks on view are No.5-7 from Sharon Harper´s series of photographs, Moon Studies and Star Scratches (2004).

Through approximately 130 artworks and a selection of early scientific instruments and maps, the exhibition details how mankind has approached the moon over time, both optically and artistically. Balancing artistic vision with scientific fact, major historical moments are represented, from the invention of the telescope, to the introduction of photography, to space exploration and man´s landing on the moon. Through the interaction of art and science, our perception of the planet has been shaped, and all the paintings, graphic artworks, models, sculptures, and photographs depict the same iconic subject in unique, intriguing ways.